


Human Resources Allocation in Donor Management

by GoldsweptSilk (NevillesGran)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Biting, Cocktail Party of Wealthy Literal Bloodsuckers, Dubious Consent, Implied Murder, M/M, Making Out, Mind Manipulation, Possessive Behavior, Vampires, mild vampire politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 11:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20242180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/GoldsweptSilk
Summary: Jon and Martin attend a cocktail party for work.





	Human Resources Allocation in Donor Management

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: this is actually the first thing conceived of in this AU! Also the farthest thus far published from TMA canon, but what's the POINT of a vampire AU if you can't have evil decadent fancy parties? Set roughly late s3.

Jon didn’t want to be a vampire. He— Well, he— That is to say, he didn’t—

Objectively, he knew that most of...everything about his “life” these days was terrible. The blood-drinking, the instincts that felt almost feral at times, the disregard for human life and agency... 

But if he’d known he was going to have to attend cocktail parties, he _ really _ would have objected to being turned.

“—but now he’d denied me a _ second _ time, and, you know, I could just wait for him to die, but he’d probably leave the property to one of those children, and it’s such a lovely view that I simply couldn’t wait.”

Jon made a polite noise of interest as Serena Fairchild prattled about a beach house she’d found and, apparently, the man she’d killed to get it. He took a sip of champagne and cast his Sight around the room for something less terrible to do, hoping that would be more surreptitious than a physical glance.

It was all just monsters in black tie dress chatting over drinks, or in some cases canapés. Just the same as the previous such events—just the same as the few fancy parties he’d been invited to at Oxford, and hated then, too. Annabelle Cane had organized this one, though, typically, she didn’t seem to have attended. The main difference was that this time, Elias had handed him the Institute’s web-embossed invitation and sent him off on his own. 

On his own except for Martin. He was by the bar now, chatting with a vampire who appeared to be older-middle-aged—no real indication of anything. Jon could barely sense his mind, as though it disappeared into fog—a Lukas. But Martin seemed comfortable enough.

“How are _ your _ entertainments progressing, then, Archivist?” Serena asked.

Jon cursed mentally, then stopped himself from even that. Not so surreptitious, then.

“Oh, you know,” he said vaguely, and took another sip. “Just work... Actually.” This didn’t have to be a useless evening. “I’m sure you’ve heard that Nikola Orsinov and her acolytes are planning a ritual of some sorts. If you have any interest in, you know, the world not ending—”

He gestured with his nearly empty glass and suddenly a waiter was there, offering another on a tray—and, with a low-cut blouse and vacant eyes, his neck. All the staff were like this. Bite marks showed where someone else had already taken that drink option this evening. 

A bit different than Oxford.

Jon put his empty glass down and took the full one. Across the room, Lukas leaned forward, smiling but inescapably predatory, and Martin gave a stilted laugh.

“Oh, Nikola is a card, isn’t she? I’m so glad she’s finally come to London, even if she did bring all those...circus folk.” Serena’s sneer was genteel enough to adorn the National Portrait Gallery. “Though they put on a wonderful show, I hear, all dancing and blood...”

Jon wasn’t _ trying _ to See, but he nonetheless slipped behind Martin’s eyes for an instant as Lukas reached out and cupped his chin, turning it as though to get a better view. Jon wouldn’t have brought Martin at all—it was nice to have one person in the room whom he didn’t hate as a default, but that wasn’t worth risking anyone but himself. However, it _ was _ worth the endangerment, Elias had instructed, to put on a show of strength and stable support, or some nonsense like that. So Martin had tagged along at Jon’s elbow for the first hour or so of the party, quiet and deferential as the other handful of personal thralls people had brought.

Then they split up and Martin started making his own conversations, a pointed show of the Archival staff’s own devising.

Lukas smiled with a flash of fang and Martin tilted his head to the side and Jon was _ there _, shoving Martin behind him, just barely holding back a snarl and not hiding his fangs at all.

“You must be Jonathan!” said Lukas. He stepped back to a more polite distance and held out a hand as though he hadn’t just been using it to touch Martin. “Peter Lukas. I was just admiring your thrall here—”

“Great,” Jon snapped. “Excuse us for a moment, we have—business. Somewhere else.”

Without another word he turned and towed Martin to the nearest door, which fortunately turned out to lead to a hallway. Martin didn’t resist, alarm warring with, losing to, the heady sense of <strike>his master’s</strike> Jon’s will.

Jon found another door and opened it to some sort of snooker room. He pulled Martin in and pushed him against the nearest wall, hands flicking over his face, his neck, his arms and sides; his Sight delved deeper. “You’re fine, he didn’t hurt you, nobody’s touched you?”

“No one, nobody but you.” Martin arched against the wall, baring his throat, his mind and will opening so beautifully in Jon’s Sight. There was nothing there but love and adulation, capitulation; no influence but Martin himself and Jon, and a sliver of Elias but that was acceptable, for now. Barely.

Jon leaned up and kissed him, accepted Martin’s moan as his due, didn’t hesitate to bite down until blood dripped down both their chins. It was sweet in a way that had nothing to do with sugar.

The chemical effects of the venom set in almost instantly, and the instinctively satisfying knowledge that Martin was feeding his...Jon; it turned him breathily desperate and pliant. Jon settled behind Martin’s eyes and felt it too, saw himself bloody-mouthed and resplendent. He moved down to the bright veins in Martin’s neck and Martin tilted his head for a better angle, for _ more. _ They shared the giddying rush of the blood at Jon’s bite—of life, life, _ life _; Jon’s heart didn’t beat anymore but Martin’s did and it was Jon’s in every way.

Jon moved back to Martin’s mouth and this time bit his own lips, fed Martin the blood. Martin took it just as greedily as he had given, and Jon kissed him slow and sweet and thorough as it swept through him, not life itself but strength, power, mine_ mine _ ** _mine. _ ** Marking every inch of him, mind and will and body. Every heartbeat sang back, _ yours, yours, yours. _

Eventually Jon came back to himself a bit, pressing lazy, barely-biting kisses to Martin’s collarbone, wrapped in Martin’s arms. Even with a little less blood, Martin was still so warm, so full of life. So comfortingly open and Jon’s.

Jon rested his head on Martin’s shoulder and licked his lips self-consciously, and said, “We— I rather fucked up that plan to show people we’re independent and respectful of human agency.”

“You…” 

Jon watched Martin’s own mental haze fade as he struggled on sheer reflex to find a diplomatic answer, even as he felt and happily accepted Jon’s Sight on every moment of it.

“...Yeah. Kinda pretty much, I think.”

Jon snorted, then turned it into a groan and pushed his face deeper into Martin’s shoulder. “Do we have to go back in there?”

_ Anything you want_, Martin’s heart beat. But he said apologetically, “I think so. It’s polite, right? And it would show we’re not, um. Ashamed. Or...”

“An infant of a monster easily manipulable by my petty instincts and the very few people I’ve committed to protecting?”

“...Passionate?”

This was why Jon had brought Martin rather than Tim, or god forbid Melanie. Though his consummate spinning was belied by his blush, as _ passionate _ met _ protected _ and combined with the growing realization that they had, more or less, booked it out of a fancy cocktail party to go neck like teenagers in a back room.

For a moment, Jon felt as free as though he _ was _ nineteen, and Georgie had just stolen his cocktail and dragged him into a broom closet. And Martin’s nose crinkled when he blushed. So Jon kissed him again, no fangs at all, despite the way the blood welling just beneath Martin’s skin made them _ itch _ to sink in. 

Screw the party, and whatever Elias or the Web or _ whoever _ had planned for them at it. This was what made all the terrible things worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this is a strictly "Peter Lukas can go jump in a lake; we're keeping everyone we love" AU. Concrit welcome!


End file.
